It's not that easy anymore.
You see, I imagine that writing professionally and then getting away from it is a bit like playing a sport professionally, retiring and then trying to make a comeback a few years later. You've lost that first step, that edge. We all remember Michael Jordan trying to do this. And I honestly cringed when I heard Lance Armstrong was going to return to cycling. You always want to go out on top and have people remember you as successful, not a broken-down shadow of your former self who has bad grammar and terrible sentence construction. You see, I know it will come back to me, but I don't know that I want the whole world watching me get the kinks out. But maybe it will be endearing.
So, about me. I'm a 28 year old housewife in Cincinnati, Ohio. I've been at home for about a month now, after closing up shop on my own business and deciding my marriage was more important than succeeding at selling makeup. (More on that later.) In the past, I've been a newspaper reporter and worked for a news wire in Washington, D.C. before deciding that journalists didn't make any money and worked crappy hours so I didn't really want to pursue that. But, I finished my degree Summa Cum Laude (that old perfectionist thing) even though I knew I probably wouldn't be using it professionally.
Out of my undergrad, I started a business with another journalism student (who also happened to be my first husband) and we decided that one of us needed some training in business. So, I went on to graduate school to study just that. We got divorced 18 months later and I transferred to a less expensive graduate program that allowed me to work full-time and go to school at night, but I graduated with my MBA two days after my 25th birthday and a month before I got married the second time. At that point, I'd sold my interest in the company for about 12 dollars and a bread machine and had worked in public relations and event planning and then as a communications coordinator for a division of my hometown Chamber of Commerce.
Then it seems like the bad decisions just came piling on. As I mentioned before, I got married again. Shortly before that, I left my position at the Chamber to follow my boss to a high-end jewelry store, where I ended up as the bookkeeper (after being promised a marketing position). Me, who hates math, hates sitting in front of spreadsheets, gets physically sick when the real accountants call and want to "review the numbers" and drifts off if I spend too much time talking to them. After six weeks, I swore I was done with both the marriage and the job. The marriage lasted seven months, the job two and a half years. Eventually, the man who'd hired me on was unceremoniously fired and I was promoted to business manager. Basically, I was doing all the day-to-day HR, PR, IT, AP and AR in addition to the scheduling, hiring, firing, etc. I was working 60- 70 hours a week at a job I mostly hated, supervising people 40 years older than I who mostly hated me. Oh, and did I mention I wasn't making very much money? It was debilitating, to say the least.
After my second divorce, my mom told me I should sign up on eHarmony and for god's sake, let them choose the next guy I married because I was wretched at it. Not having a rebuttal for that, I gave it a try. And that's how I met Antony, my husband. (If you are keeping track, my THIRD husband.) We clicked right away and even though it was a four-hour drive each way to see each other, we did that for six months until I found a job here in Cincinnati that allowed me to move down. I worked for almost a year as a fundraiser for the United Way, which was a very interesting peek into the lives of people who work like dogs for very little money. Kind of like journalists, but with less creative outlet. Then, I left that for the whole cosmetics thing and did that for a little more than a year, until I broke down in tears one day and decided to quit. Strangely, I had ended up working like a dog for very little money. This is a theme in my life, like marrying the wrong guy or gaining and losing the same 10 pounds over and over. You think I'd learn!
I did. This time, instead of jumping into something else soul-sucking that paid poorly, I thought I'd take a break. Because my husband is wildly successful at many things, including choosing spouses and his job, we don't really need me to earn an income. We can maintain the standard of living we enjoy without me working like a dog for very little money. Woo-hoo! Plus, we are trying to start a family, finishing up building our dream home and I have no idea what I want to be when I grow up. All of these facts lead me to say, forget the workplace, I'm going to stay home and be happy.
And I am. I refuse to apologize for my life. I work hard at cooking, cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping, keeping the finances in order and making sure we are on-track with the new house and selling our current home. These are all things I PAID other people to do for me while I was out peddling lipstick, so I must regard them as legitimate professions. Why do they suddenly become less legitimate because I'm doing them for myself? And when we have children, why would I go through the torture of pregnancy and childbirth just to turn them over to someone else to raise? It just doesn't make sense to me. It never has.
So I'm sitting here at the computer at 8:30 in the morning, writing. I got up with Tony today, like always, packed his lunch, made sure he had breakfast, started a load of laundry, reconciled the checkbook and now I'm doing some writing before I head to the gym. Later today, I'll do more laundry, meet up with Tony at the new house for a progress review and then back to the gym (it's those 10 pounds I still haven't lost.) I don't know if this life will always been as fun or fulfilling, but while it is, I'm going to enjoy it. I'm going to embrace the laundry and the cooking and the writing and ignore anyone who says, "But don't you get bored?"
Honey, if I get bored, I read a book. When was the last time you were able to do that? Thought so.
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